Little Trailer Park on the Prairie: Determinants of Site Rents in Parks in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain States

Abstract

Recent research has indicated that the manufactured housing industry is highly heterogeneous, mainly because both demand conditions and zoning restrictiveness vary enormously from one locale to another. There is little formal empirical work on the industry, especially in the low population density region that encompasses the Great Plains (including Texas) and Rocky Mountain states. Using a data set with nearly 60,000 manufactured housing sales transactions for the regions, we explore the determinants of park lot rents using a GMM 3SLS model. Both park lot rent levels, their determinants, and responses to local multi-family and single-family housing conditions vary from one economic region to another.